Advent 3A   Is. 35:1-10, Ps. 146:4-9, James 5:7-10, Mt. 11:2-22

The Rev. Anne Jensen

 Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.  That’s our prayer for today, and it’s a strong prayer.  There’s no please attached, no polite oblique, Anglican approach.  Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.  That prayer could easily have been uttered by the Israelites threatened by their neighbors, the people Isaiah was addressing in today’s first lesson, just as it could have been prayed by the first century people of Palestine….or by us. 

 Maybe Martin Luther King Jr. prayed something similar in his moments of frustration in the face of unrelenting racism.  He may well have feared that the situation wasn’t going to change.  Yet he had a dream about what God intends for us.  King   described a time in this country when race would no longer be a cause of injustice.
 What is your vision of what the world ought to be like?  For most of us this vision would reflect peace, contentment and security:  freedom from stress, fear and anger; a desire for “home”—not necessarily home as we know it, but home as we hope for-- love, acceptance, security, a sense of well-being, wholeness and connectedness.
 The theological word for this vision/hope is Shalom.  It is what God intended in creation.  Often shalom is translated peace.  But the peace of God’s creation was disrupted by human rebellion, symbolized by the story of the Garden of Eden.  We have vandalized shalom, and ever since we have longed to have it restored.  We long for a world that bears the characteristics of God’s reign.  We long to go “home.”
 Our lesson from Isaiah holds up a vision of what God will do to restore God’s people, a time when sins are forgiven and the world returns to the way it is supposed to be.  The prophet Isaiah says, “Be strong, do not fear!  Here is your God.”  And then he bursts into poetry to describe what will happen:  The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.  For the waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water...
 The prophet envisions the reversal of the present violent chaos.... the elements of wilderness living...alienation, pervasive war, devastating disease.  Under God’s sovereignty there will be no more exploitation or killing and health will be restored.  What a world!
 What if we took this passage from Isaiah as an invitation to join God in creating such a world?  As Christians, we believe that this is what Jesus did.  He rejected the power politics of the Sadducees, Herodians, and temple priests, all of whom resented, yet cooperated with the Roman occupying power to maintain their own status and power.  Jesus’ vision was very different.  Jesus laid out his program in the Sermon on the Mount.  His kingdom will be one whose citizens are humble and gentle, returning love for hatred, refusing to engage in violence, and even praying for enemies.  This is the Holy Way that Isaiah said God would provide, and I love this:  “no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.”
 Some will accept Christ’s new way of relating to one another; some will ignore it, and many, especially those who profit from “the way things are” will oppose it.  It was so in Jesus’ time and it is still so.  But “the way things are” is not “how things are supposed to be.”  We are a far distance from “how things are supposed to be.” as the result of sin.  .  I am going to save that topic—sin--for another sermon.  But we are not without hope.  We are not without vision.
 Here is the heart of what I want to say today:  We must hold on to the vision of the way things are supposed to be because that is how we defeat the power of evil.  How do we know what this vision is?  We’ll know if it shows signs similar to the vision that Isaiah puts forth.  The vision of how things are supposed to be is characterized by justice, equity, faithfulness, and righteousness, which means being in right relationship with God and with your neighbor—this rules out the kind of selfishness that says “I’ll take care of my desires and then if there is any left over, I’ll think about sharing.”
One of the main tasks of the interim period is to build the vision of the ministry of this congregation.  The power of the vision is that it calls us out of ourselves, out of our selfishness and preoccupations; it calls us to see the world as God wants us to see it, full of possibilities.  Bishop Andrus encourages us to build the beloved community, and he is asking us to envision that community.  I think it’s safe to say that community is not one that only looks inward.  I believe we’re called to be a community that is transformative, transformative for the people who walk through the door and transformative as our ministry makes is possible for the larger community to be transformed.  To do this, to allow God to transform us requires a radical creative imagination and a huge trust. 
I’m thinking of possibilities for literacy programs, housing for the homeless, and community for the lonely.   How can we join other communities to build this ministry?  I invite you to take this passage from Isaiah seriously, just as Jesus did, and to give it a contemporary shape.  This is not committee work that you can pass off to someone else.  This is what each one of us is called to, and then we are called to come together to discern what God is calling us to as a faith community.
The Bible invites us to imagine what is possible with God.  In Living the 7 Habits: The Courage to Change, Steven Covey writes, “Imagination is more powerful than memory.  Imagination taps into possibilities, into the infinite.  Memory is limited by past events and the finite.”  I believe God gave us memory, thought and language so that we can be imaginative…to hold on to the vision and to make this broken world a place of nurture, healing, transformation and reconciliation.
The prophet Isaiah foretells of a king who is to come.  Since the time of the early Church Christians have understood this king to be Jesus, and he invites us to live in this peaceable kingdom.  We DO have an influence on others around us.  Our job as Christians is to hold an alternative view of “how the world is supposed to be” in a society where the main forces of culture seek to deny, discredit or disregard a vision that is characterized by righteousness, faithfulness, and love.  Indeed, we are a people inspired by resurrection and filled with the hope that shalom will be restored.  “Become the change you wish to see.”  Individually and communally we are called to live out our prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” That is to restore shalom.
Remember that when we greet one another each Sunday with the words, “The peace of the Lord be with you,” we are holding up the vision of shalom.

John the Baptist sends his emissaries to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  It’s such a poignant question.  Jesus doesn’t answer directly.    He could have said, “Yes,”, or even “Maybe,” but he didn’t.  He said, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear”... and more.  He’s saying to John’s followers, “The prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled....what does that tell you?”  John can go to his death, which is about to happen, knowing that he has seen his savior, that the time of the Lord is at hand.  With the birth of Jesus, the Kingdom of God, which is characterized by shalom, has broken in.  It has begun...that’s why we see God at work in moments of justice and kindness and love that lead to reconciling the world to God and each other.  At the same time God’s work is not yet complete.  There is still war, disease, pain, death, destruction and injustice.  They are all too evident.  Yet God has given us a savior who has power to heal:  he can heal our blindness to the suffering of those who rarely make the headlines, the millions of people hungering for food, clean water and education.  He can heal our deafness to the cries of people trapped by an economic system that gives them no hope for a better future.  He can open our hearts to see that God’s love for the world is for all people.  We can recite these as platitudes, the real test comes when we see the homeless and the hungry on our doorstep, quite literally.
When we put our trust in Jesus, and in his power to heal and his power to change us and the world through love, we discover what Isaiah promised to the people of Israel when they were desolate: “they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”  Joy is about trust and being in right relationship—it’s what we discover when we are Christ’s people, following the Holy Way.  Our joy will be complete when He comes again.  “Come, Lord Jesus.”  We pray those words with longing and with hope.    

"Amen"